


Like breadcrumbs, lost

by snarkydame



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, Siblings, urban fairytales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkydame/pseuds/snarkydame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are lost and getting more so, and all they have is each other.  A Hansel & Gretel AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like breadcrumbs, lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brooklinegirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brooklinegirl/gifts).



* * * * * *  
  
  
His hands are shaking, uselessly, helplessly, and he hides them deep in his pockets before Gerard can see. He can still feel its skin on his fingertips, silken shadowed traces, like oil on water, like the wet, silt-slimed traces of dead leaves on the sidewalk.  
  
"Come on," he says, and waits for Gerard's hand to grip the back of his hoodie. He leads the way, and keeps his steps slow. Orange-red firelight licks around their shadows, flickers over cigarette butts in sidewalk cracks. He can hear Gerard stumbling behind him.   
  
* * *  
  
They stood at the intersection for ages, in thin winter sunlight that did little to warm the wind. Mikey's hand was sweaty and cramped in Gerard's, but he never considered letting go. Neither of them spoke. The sound of tires hissing past filled his ears until they hurt.  
  
He wasn't coming back for them. Dad. Wasn't coming back.  
  
The sun was setting behind the office buildings across the street by the time they moved. The wind was starting to bite. Fluorescent lights buzzed to life behind them, lighting the empty bus stop with a bone white glare.  
  
Gerard shifted, swung his hand. Looking up, Mikey caught a crooked smile on his face, fleeting, fragile, just for him. He couldn't find one of his own to give, and he was sorry.  
  
"You hungry?" Gerard asked him. The hissing tires tried to drown him out, but Mikey always heard him.  
  
"I've got a few dollars more than we'll need for tickets. We'll find something."  
  
* * *  
  
He sees stooped forms in every darkened doorway, arms too long, knees too boney. He pretends he doesn't though, keeps walking. Gerard's clutching the back of his hoodie with both hands now. Mikey wants to stop. To look back at him.  
  
They aren't far enough away yet. If he looks back, he'll see fire.  
  
"Gerard," he says, but his brother doesn't speak.  
  
* * *  
  
The city seemed straight forward enough, those first few blocks away from the station. They went north, kept the setting sun on their left. They walked by banks and parking garages, bland little diners already closed, accounting firms with empty lobbies.  
  
Gerard talked. Mikey couldn't follow the thread of conversation through the sound of tires in his head, but it didn't matter. He knew the words were Gerard's own way of pushing away the sight of Dad's battered station wagon, driving away. He answered when Gerard seemed to want him to, but he couldn't be sure of what he said. He imagined the conversation drifting in their wake, a trail laid down beneath the traffic's growl.  
  
Mikey didn't notice it at first, the way the street turned. The offices hid the sun at every opportunity, and bounced its light from west to east, window to window, until he couldn't swear which direction they faced, at all.  
  
Drivers turned their headlights on. At each intersection, they walked in front of blank, bright eyes.   
  
Gerard walked more slowly, pulled Mikey a little closer to his side. The buildings all were lower now, less sanitized. Neon flickered between streetlights, blue and green and poison pink. But the doors they brightened seemed too flat. The windows reflected brilliant colors, but revealed nothing of interiors.   
  
Shadowed figures leaned in doorways, under street lamps. They were all too tall. Too thin. He could not see their faces.  
  
"What street is this?" Mikey heard his brother say. The words were sharp and clear – all the traffic sound was gone.  
  
* * *  
  
He stops at the curb. The crosswalk is faded, the reflective paint no more than ghostly lines in the dark. _don't walk don't walk don't_ flashes from the far side.  
  
He doesn't know which way to go.  
  
There are no cars. There are no people. Even the neon is shutting down behind them – he can feel the shadows creeping deeper around his legs.   
  
Its city's dying with it, he thinks. It'll pull us under, too, if he can't find their way out.  
  
* * *  
  
"Hey, Mikey," Gerard said, and Mikey held a little harder to his hand. Gerard's fingers had gone slack. "Do you hear that?"  
  
The street was narrow, and lined with cars. They flanked a bar, so heavily hung with venomous blue neon that it pulsed in the dark. Its door was open, and Mikey thought he saw a man there, a lit cigarette held like an ember between long, thin fingers.  
  
There was music. It wove through the dark with a strangely halting beat – like Mikey was only hearing pieces. Gerard leaned toward it.  
  
"I don't think we should," Mikey said. Speech took effort. He'd almost forgotten how it worked.  
  
"I smell french fries," Gerard said.  
  
"I'm not hungry," Mikey lied. He couldn't see past the man in the door.  
  
"I'm starving," Gerard said. He sounded half asleep.  
  
* * *  
  
  
Something, a sound, a word, teases at his attention. Mikey holds his breath, trying to hear.   
  
That's his brother's voice, he thinks. Like a trail, broken and scattered, but still, somehow, he can hear the smallest echo from before. How it lingers, how it holds its place on the shifting, twisting road, he doesn't know. But that's his brother's voice.   
  
He steps off the curb. He follows it.  
  
Gerard goes with him.  
  
* * *  
  
The man with the lit cigarette stepped aside as they went in. Mikey stuck close to Gerard, reluctant to brush against the stranger. He looked back, frowning as they moved around him. He couldn't smell smoke.  
  
"Hey," he said, and tried to stop without letting go of Gerard's hand. Gerard didn't seem to hear him. He moved through the room as if to avoid a crowd of people, but all Mikey saw was shadow. The music's volume rose. Missing pieces of the beat skipped and tumbled past him – Gerard, he thought, could hear them.  
  
Something brushed against his cheek. Something warm and damp, like a breath in the dark, and Mikey recoiled.  
  
Gerard's hand slipped out of his.  
  
He reached out for it, heart hammering, but what he touched instead felt like tattered cloth. A shadow fell away from him, and folded on the floor.   
  
"Gerard!" he cried, but his brother had reached the bar. The man with the lit cigarette stood on the other side, and passed Gerard a drink.  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
Mikey walks faster – his hoodie is pinching at his throat, Gerard's grip still tight. Mikey wants to turn around, to see if his face is still that shrouded white, to see if his eyes are still blank.  
  
He's not sure what he'd do if they were.  
  
"Listen," he says. He's not sure Gerard can hear him. "When we get back to the bus station, if there is still a bus station, we'll take tickets on the first one out. I don't care where we go," he said, "I don't care at all. Home is . . . home is with you." He pitches his voice to match the echo that he's following, so that he doesn't sound so close to tears.  
  
* * *  
  
By the time Mikey got to his brother, the glass he held was empty. The shadows were surging around him – Mikey pushed against them, and they tore like rotting curtains, clinging to his hands in heavy shreds. He stretched, but Gerard was already sagging.   
  
At his touch, he looked up, confused. He looked right past him. Like he couldn't see him. Like he wasn't there.   
  
"Mikey?" he thought he saw him ask, but he couldn't hear his voice. And then his head was on the bar, and Mikey couldn't see if he was breathing.  
  
He cried out in denial, and pulled himself closer. He couldn't lift his brother's head. He couldn't get a grip on his shoulder.  
  
On the other side of the bar, the man with the lit cigarette seemed unconcerned, and no longer much like a man at all. The form was much too tall, hunched so that Mikey could see the knobs of its curved spine. Its arms, long and skeletal, like dark bones wrapped in grave cloths, had too many joints. It moved deliberately, with a horrifying sort of grace. It didn't seem to notice Mikey's struggles.  
  
It set down the lit cigarette, and fire bloomed around it, an oven like a demon's grin, wide and hungry and much, much too close to Gerard. Its light fell across his too pale face. Mikey saw his eyes were open, and blind.  
  
Mikey wanted to scream, but the broken music was drowning him out, even in his own head. He wanted to hide, to curl up and cry. He wanted his brother to look at him.  
  
With an effort that left his pulse thudding madly in his throat, he tore free of the clinging shadows. The momentum left him flailing, careening forward, and he fell against the thing reaching for his brother – fell against it more than pushed, and it seemed to jerk in surprise, as though it really hadn't known that he was there.   
  
The music stuttered. The neon lights behind the roiling shadows flared. And the thing fell back into the fire, which roared up eagerly to meet it and singed it all to ash.  
  
* * *  
  
He reaches the sidewalk on the other side of the street and finds sunlight. Winter pale and hardly warmer than the night they'd walked out of, but it seems vivid as summer to Mikey. He hears the sound of normal traffic, horns and squealing brakes and people, people everywhere.  
  
He can hardly catch his breath – it sears into his lungs like he's never used them before, new and shocking.  
  
They're in the mouth of an alley. He can see the bus station, a block away. He hears the idle rumble of loading buses. Someone on the street nearby has their car stereo blasting through open windows despite the chill. He can hear every note.  
  
Gerard rests his head on Mikey's shoulder. He shudders once, and then his hands let go of his hoodie. Mikey's eyes are open so wide they burn, but he won't turn around, he won't, he won't . . . he stares steadfastly at the passing traffic.  
  
"I'm sorry," Gerard says. His voice is raw, and shadows linger in it. Mikey can feel the warm, wet tracks of tears on the back of his neck. But, "Thank you," Gerard says next. "Mikey, let's go . . ." He trails off then, not knowing what to say that isn't _home_.  
  
"I don't care where," Mikey says, and he doesn't. He doesn't at all. He turns around, and Gerard is there, and his eyes are clear.

 

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> I did, after fussing about it for a while, go ahead and chop the last sentence off of the originally posted story. Endings are hard! /whine


End file.
